Akamai CDN customers benefit from a wide range of content delivery network services and technologies. It’s what makes the Akamai CDN one of the top content delivery networks on the market, with industry leading performance. The evidence for this performance and technological prowess is clear when you look at Akamai’s customer list, which includes some of the biggest in online brands.

Now, Microsoft Azure has become the latest company to tap into the Akamai CDN. Whilst already offering their customers access to their own CDN, Azure is now allowing them to access Akamai CDN web acceleration services from 2016. This comes after many collaborations that has seen the Akamai CDN deliver large Microsoft downloads, such as Windows 10.

Akamai CDN Benefits

Speaking of the development, Carl Brooks, an analyst with 451 Research, said, "this is another indication of the need for erstwhile competitors to band together. [The partnership is] one way to attempt to face down AWS’s CDN network, which is on a scale with Akamai’s, despite being much younger."

Brooks went on to explain that Akamai lacks the compute and developer services that Amazon Web Services and Azure have, and Azure "does not quite have the scale" to compete against AWS on CDN.

"That makes this a marriage of opportunity, and frankly, users are never sad to see more choice in their cloud buying options," Brooks said.

"With Akamai, Azure customers will enjoy an expanded global footprint and reach, particularly in Latin America and Asia, as well as access to more capabilities and advanced features," wrote Sudheer Sirivara, partner director for Azure Media and Azure CDN Services, in a blog post at the time. "Public sector customers will also enjoy more convenient access as both platforms have achieved the FedRAMP JAB’s highest certification."